site banner

Transnational Thursday for November 21, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It looks like it was just the kinetic vehicle with no nuclear warheads.

Is that supposed to be surprising? Russia has been conducting missile strikes for years with nuclear-capable missiles (not least because most of their modern missiles are nuclear-capable).

Russia using an ICBM is just a symbolic tit-for-tat for the US ATACMs range release. It's not a particularly cost-efficient delivery platform, but is intended to play into the recent implicit saber-ratling as a demonstration of capability.

It’s not surprising, but I think it‘s worth mentioning when talking about an ICBM launch.